Sten

The Sten series is a science fiction saga written by Allan Cole and Chris Bunch. The eponymous protagonist is an orphan from a hellish industrial space station, who escapes prison and indentured servitude to join the Emperor's armed forces (well, he was sort of pressed into the service, but it beat the hell out of industrial slavery).

His native talent and the skills he acquired not dying on the hell-world Vulcan come in handy in the military, and he goes on to become a covert operative in the enigmatic Mercury Corps, the Emperor's special forces.

Throughout the course of the series he adds to his rank, consequence and badassery. He has as much success with women as one would expect of a covert operative, only with more monogamy than your average James Bond.

Agent Provocateur: Mercury Corps uses this as a matter of course. Sten incites rebellion on Vulcan by fulfilling the Mig folk story of "one of their own" who will get out, return, and lead them to freedom. Especially effective because he is, and does.

Ambadassador: In the second-to-last book, Vortex, Sten has become this. His assignment is to stabilize a world full of ethnicities and races that absolutely despise one another, and even though he's pretty deft at managing problems through diplomacy, he's still as much of a lethal badass as before, as some would-be rioters and assassins find out.

Applied Phlebotinum: AM2, Antimatter-2, is used in everything from bullets to spaceships. It's never explained how it differs from "everyday" antimatter.

This holds true until the final book, Empire's End, where the exigencies of the story require more detail on what AM2 is and where it comes from; this detail is supplied semi-satisfactorily in a sort of retcon of AM2 to be matter from another universe with unique properties intrinsic to it that happen to merely resemble antimatter in terms of reaction with most other matter. The earlier books in the series (that is: all of them) don't really have a good explanation for this.

Imperium X, a rare mineral that's necessary to shield AM2, and the 'crystal metal' Sten's knife is made from.

The first book has a short sequence during Sten's Boot Camp which shows off an entire series of Powered Armor which grow larger until they are Humongous Mecha near the middle, then become smaller and more compact near the end. It's explained that Humongous Mecha are awesome, capable of sustaining the pilot's life for weeks and laying waste to small cities, but have virtually no agility. The drill instructor relates a story of how a planet of spear-wielding natives once destroyed a battalion of the mecha by laying pitfall traps everywhere, hence why more modern mechs are much smaller and more maneuverable.

It's telling that in the majority of the conflicts throughout the rest of the series, we don't see any of the power suits in action either, other than simple high-tech combat harnesses or space-suits. Most vehicles are more conventional tanks, though we do also get flying cars.

We do see power armor used by the operatives sent to arrest Alex Kilgour on his home planet at the start of book 6. Logical in that Alex is from a planet of Heavy Worlders and the soldiers would need the power armor just to move around there, let alone be able to fight on even terms with the inhabitants. Kilgour then invokes this trope by taking advantage of the fact that heavy power armor doesn't maneuver at all well on slick surfaces and deliberately leads them down a sharply-inclined street that happens to be completely frozen over. (It was midwinter). The operatives are faced with a choice of following him down the icy slope (and thus falling on their asses) or turning on their armor's jump jets and flying down (and thus being sitting ducks for any competent marksman). They try it both ways, fail it both ways, and die.

The Caligula: Many of the evil tyrants we see are depraved in some way or like to indulge in one or more vices. One character directly references Caligula in two ways; first he quotes "If only all my subjects had but one throat so I could slit it" and secondly, he points out the man's sexual escapades before indulging in some of his own.

Chekhov's Gun: Placed on the wall near the beginning of the first book, unused till the very end of the series -- Baron Thoresen's Bravo Project just might be the solution to cheap creation of Anti-Matter Two after all.

Cold Equation: The Emperor (long before he was Emperor, just an engineer) and the survivors of his crew on a starship limping back to earth, with limited power, air, and food, start offing each other one at a time as they determine who's the least-useful. Those who are killed are put into the recycler and turned into edible "soup."

Let's see...we have a (blonde!) Sten who looks like he's in his 60's sharing a cover with Chewbacca and an Apollo rocket.

One cover for "Revenge of the Damned," a big "The Great Escape" reference, is accurate to the first moments of the book, where Sten and his buddy Alex Kilgour are cutting through a fence with his Absurdly Sharp Blade...except the blade on the cover glows like a tiny lightsaber. One gets the feeling the artist didn't read much of the book, although it might be intended to represent the crystal of the blade catching the light.

Death World: Not including worlds that are just controlled by evil dictators who make life for their subjects a living hell, there are several. One's a planet full of valuable fast-growing crystals but is similar to Io or Venus, because it's got a horribly toxic atmosphere and is full of exploding volcanoes. One's a Prison Planet that is intentionally filled with dangerous things; the convicts are expected to do all sorts of high-risk jobs to obtain valuable exotics, such as dangerous mines for jewels, dangerous tidewaters full of Starfish Aliens for valuable mollusks, and killer tumbleweeds that spray acid when anybody stops them. The Bhor homeworld used to be an icy Death World but they deliberately induced global warming to make it more hospitable.

Dystopia: Most of the worlds that Sten is assigned to are political (or literal) hell-holes that need to be gutted and reformed. As the series goes on towards its conclusion, the Empire itself becomes less and less a nice place to live, hence the last book in the series being "Empire's End."

Dystopia Is Hard: Part of what makes Sten's recurring "topple this dictatorship" missions possible is that they're all so fundamentally flawed that all he needs to do is to expose those weaknesses and exploit them for all they're worth until something snaps. This eventually occurs to the Empire itself; the harder its masters clamp down on personal freedoms, the harder it becomes for anything to actually be run well.

The Empire: A relatively benevolent one, for a while. It doesn't last; Rykor points out that most empires do tend to harden and then crumble over time.

Evil All Along: The Emperor himself, at least as Rykor puts it. Coming back wrong just made his psychosis bubble to the surface; the guy had been quietly eliminating absolutely everyone in the past twenty centuries who would be a threat to his power, and did such a good job of it he seems like a nice guy too.

Executive Meddling: Several in-universe examples. There is, of course, the Privy Council, a junta of CEOs who decide killing the Emperor and taking over after the war is a good idea (it wasn't, not for them or anyone else). After he comes back and makes Sten an Ambadassador, the Emperor hamstrings Sten's efforts to stabilize a world of hostile ethnicities by forcing him to support a myopic, self-important racist as the leader of said world.

Friendly Sniper: Cind is a very nice gal. Young, pretty, lethal within a five mile radius...

Gargle Blaster: Stregg, an alien beverage quaffed by gigantic wookie-like Space Vikings. The beverage itself is named after the "streggan," a vicious monster that these Space Viking wookies once hunted as a rite of manhood; in other words, this is the manliest, toughest drink in the universe. Sten takes a liking to the stuff after the second book, and briefly gets the Emperor hooked on the stuff too.

To give a measure of how powerful stregg is, at one point the Eternal Emperor hands Sten a glass of 180-proof home-brewed moonshine, expecting it to knock Sten straight on his ass. Sten tosses the entire glass back as if it's distilled water, then calmly asks for a refill. He explains to the incredulous Emperor that once you've built up enough alcohol tolerance to be able to handle stregg at all, you can Won't Work On Me pretty much anything else ever distilled.

Gold Fever: A variation of it occurs in the Emperor's backstory. He was a simple space engineer at the time on a ship that accidentally discovered the portal to an alternate universe filled with antimatter--a nearly limitless supply of energy that would completely transform society upon its discovery, and make anyone who had a monopoly on it insanely rich. This would be enough to make people think greedy thoughts on its own. The ship becomes badly damaged, however, and while it's limping back to Earth it becomes clear that the fewer survivors there are the more air and food there will be for the rest...

Good-Looking Privates: In the course of eight books spanning a couple galaxies and a cast composed almost entirely of military personnel, it was bound to crop up.

The Great Escape: The first part of Revenge of the Damned is one giant Shout-Out to The Great Escape. Then Sten has to break back in and it becomes a more serious version of Hogan's Heroes, if you can imagine that.

Heavyworlder: Kilgour. So it justifies a lot of improbable moves like:

Sten swallowed. The Angelo stew savored his tongue, and then gobbled down his throat to his stomach. A small nuclear flame bloomed, and his eyes teared and his nose wept and his ears turned bright red. The Stregg in his bloodstream fled before a horde of hot-pepper molecules.

Improvised Weapon: Paraphrased from Empire's End: "Given the chance, he would turn anything given to him into a weapon. A piece of paper would do just fine. A glass would be even better."

Informed Attribute: Sten's aformentioned Combat Pragmatism. He's never shown committing violence toward any female, despite the universal gender-equity of his society. The vast majority of the fighting females happen to be on his side in most cases; if they aren't, (like an assassin, or Lady Atago) it's usually someone else who does the job for him.

The Bogazi and Suzdal--inhabitants of the Altic Cluster--resemble chickens and dogs, respectively. This is how they are described to Sten, by a creature that looks like a carnivorous antelope.

Sh'aarl't looks like a giant fuzzy spider.

I Want My Jetpack: Deconstructed. Personal propulsion units do exist, but when stripped down to the bare essentials (a flying belt, basically), an entire squad of soldiers are blown off the field by the wind. Played straight with the flying cars, however.

Kukris Are Kool: Nepalese isn't the only thing Sten picked up during his time as the Gurkha's commander.

Martial Arts and Crafts: acrobats, knife jugglers, sharpshooters and other sideshow performers in one of the Emperor's games are actually Mantis operatives, showing off for the only one who knows who they really are: their Emperor.

Meaningful Name: The Emperor often goes incognito as "H.E. Raschid," based on the name of a wily monarch who some stories claimed would go around his own peasants in disguise to learn how to curry favor from them. The Emperor chose this name deliberately; he'd make note of people who showed signs of recognizing its meaning -- these were people he felt it'd be worth his while to cultivate.

Mind Probe: One of the more unpleasant devices Rykor (and others liker her) can use is a machine that scans every memory you've ever had. It's unfortunately of limited use on those who have been driven insane, however, so when they use it on a guy who's gone catatonic from nearly being eaten by a Starfish Alien, they mostly get jumbles with only a few clue threads.

Obviously Evil: The Emperor's "Privy Council," composed of the wealthiest businesspeople in his empire, and every one of them a transparent Corrupt Corporate Executive. Their leader, Sullamora, even chose a couple because of their "raw, open greed." Apparently they're so rich they can screw the rules, because they actually take over in the Emperor's absence. You can't really run a political empire quite the same way you run a financial empire, though, so things get worse.

Off-Screen Breakup: Sten and his childhood girlfriend Bet have already broken up by the beginning of the second book. This does not stop them from occasionally having sex. They agreed to be "just friends," but Bet was feeling "really friendly."

Only One Name: Sten actually has a given name, "Karl," but it's lost and forgotten quickly when he grows up on Vulcan and all military records from his enlistment on have him listed as "Sten, NI". For the record, he still knows his name, but never bothers to give it to anyone.

This is mostly the result of language changing slowly over two thousand years; in a flashback to the Eternal Emperor's early days people use more conventional curse words.

Cind is fond of using Bhor oaths, like "By my mother's beard!" (the Bhor are really hairy) because she spent so much time in their military.

Phlebotinum Dependence: The Emperor deliberately sets up the entire galaxy for this. Hyperdrives are too energy-inefficient to run on non-antimatter fuel for too long, among other things, and he is the only one who controls when and where the robot freighters containing Antimatter-Two are deployed. Upon his death, they cease to function and the supply chain for the entire galaxy collapses; this is so that when he comes back to life, he can easily topple whoever killed him.

Planet of Hats: Mostly averted, but consider: Kilgour comes from a planet called Edinburgh. In other words, somewhere in the galaxy is an entire world of people like him.

Praetorian Guard: There is literally an Imperial Praetorian Guard unit; these guys are really more of the "shine your boots and look good" honor guard rather than the elite Gurkhas the Emperor employs to actually guard himself. Unsurprisingly, most of them turn out to be untrustworthy when a coup is attempted.

Polyamory: Kilgour's solution to his love triangle? OT3! Well, actually the girls found the solution. Kilgour wasn't really consulted in the matter.

Resurrective Immortality: The Eternal Emperor. He can die, and indeed has been assassinated more than once, but he always returns a few years later to reclaim his throne.

Roboteching : There's a rare instance of a sniper rifle able to do this: if a bad guy's behind a corner, you aim near the corner, fiddle the adjustments to put spin on the projectile, and you get a gun that shoots around corners.

Rock Beats Laser: As mentioned above, power suits aren't seen often in this series because they're not very maneuverable. In fact, since one of the writers has actual military experience and the other used to work for the CIA, they know all too well that someone clever (if technologically inferior) can win the day.

Royals Who Actually Do Something: Many, including the Emperor himself; in fact, the Emperor is so hands-on that he is literally the only living man who knows the secret of where to get Antimatter-Two and has the rest of the galaxy in his pocket because of the immense wealth and power this brings him. He also loves a good beer and barfight. Many other royals or other political leaders of other nations have actual combat ability or military backgrounds, and, friend or foe, they are all nasty people.

Royals in the Sten books tend to skew either towards being hardcore military basses or ineffectual insane armchair generals. Sadly, both types have a strong tendency towards ruining the lives of those they rule over. Sten's career is built around toppling despots, and occasionally he even pits one against the other.

Sharpened to a Single Atom: Sten's crystal shiv. Fifteen molecules wide and able to cut through virtually anything. For bonus points, he keeps it inside his forearm in a little space that was surgically implanted and can whip it out any time he wants, so it effectively falls under "Blade Below the Shoulder" too.

Sten makes a friend at Flight School: a giant spider named Sh'aarl't. Also at Flight School is a "servant" -- actually, a psychologist sizing the trainees up -- whose name is W. Grenville Pelham.

Sten's friend Ida acted as a stockbroker for him, and her investments made him wealthy enough to own an uninhabited but Earthlike planet, Smallbridge. (Horatio Hornblower became Baron Hornblower of Smallbridge.)

Mercury Corps call the "appear unlike who you really are and like no one in particular" camouflage tactic a "Great Lorenzo".

Literally in one case. The creature is capable of standing up on two of its arms, runs through waist-deep water as fast as a man can on land, has powerful suckers all along its arms and a horrible blender/grinder like mouth/stomach in the center.

There are other, more benevolent Starfish Aliens in the series. Most of them are just as intelligent as any human and integrate rather well with them, despite having extremely weird biologies (like a circle of talking polyps that run a customer service desk).

Suspiciously Specific Denial: The Big Bad in the final book keeps internally justifying his actions to himself. He's not crazy, he just enjoys the screams coming from the interrogation room because it means progress is being made. He doesn't think they're all out to get him--they are all out to get him, he's not crazy!

Tactical Withdrawal: In the third book, we're shown that Imperial Guards units at big Imperial celebrations often stage simulated military actions as a show for the crowd — and the one for the current year, rather unusually, is a fighting retreat. It's very well done and impressive ... including a special effect that leaves the Eternal Emperor wondering, as he picks himself up after reflexively diving for cover, how anybody managed to simulate that sound without actually blowing something up.

Villainous Breakdown: We see this happen almost once a book. The Tahn, a powerful competing space government embroiled in a bitter (but losing) war with the Empire, suffers a nation-wide Villainous Breakdown after their most charismatic leader upon whom they pinned all their hopes is defeated. The result is complete anarchy.